1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to foot, leg and arm supports and particularly to foot, leg and arm supports for use in exercise.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are many types of exercise today that require a person to rest partially on the toes. Several types of exercises are best done with the feet and legs elevated. Moreover, there are certain types of exercises that require a user to rest on their forearms or elbows, such as an exercise called “the plank”. These exercises can be done by healthy individuals with no problems. However, for people with conditions such as gout, neuropathy, or other similar conditions, resting one's weight on the feet or elbows can be painful to the point where such exercises are difficult, if not impossible to do.
It is also true that for many healthy exercises, making standard exercises more difficult by raising the legs or the upper body has long been known. Typically, many people use benches, chairs or other similar items to accomplish this. While useful, these items are not ideal. Benches and chairs can move, causing a user to fall and become injured. Benches and chairs are also usually fixed height making them less adaptable for variations in body size. Therefore, benches and chairs are not ideal for use with alternative types of exercise.
Over the years support and footrests have been designed for various purposes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 621,098 discloses a foot rest that has a pair of curved cushions mounted on a rocking frame. Although not designed for exercise, the device could be used to support legs during pushups. However, the rocking feature makes the device unstable for proper exercise.
Several devices, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,2332,381, 5,330,408, and 5,582,565 teach devices in which the user can be supported by placing hands and feet on the device. All of these devices require that the hands and feet contact solid surfaces in the way they would if they were not using the device. These devices, therefore, provide no relief for those with the conditions mentioned above.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,826,151 teaches a unique device for pushups and hand walking. It is a frame that has rigid ankle supports. The frame is height adjustable, but has a fixed width. Moreover, the supports are fixed and cannot be adjusted. Finally, the design has wheels that can be used to walk the device around. While limited to unique purposes, such a device can be dangerous in that it can be unstable. A wrong movement could cause the device to slip and fall, possibly causing injury.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,695,754 teaches a device that also supports ankles. This device has a folding frame that has a lower base support and a pair of vertical arms. The vertical arms have slots to receive a pair of ankle pads that can rotate freely in the frame. This device has a number of drawbacks. First, the lower frame is lightweight tubing, which may be unstable in some instances. The vertical arms have no ability to adjust in width, which limits the device to essentially an ankle support. For example, doing the plank exercise, as discussed above, is really not possible with this device as it is too narrow for comfortable use. The freely rotating ankle supports may be somewhat more comfortable, but may also cause stability problems.
Note that both U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,826,151 and 6,695,754 suffer from another limitation. They both have ankle supports that are positioned on a single horizontal plane. There is no way to adjust the pads so that they are at two different heights.